Why I Didn’t Blog About Living in a Camper

Firstly, I’d like to thank those of you who have taken the time to subscribe and comment on this blog so far. I know I’ve only written a few posts, and when you subscribed, you may have been expecting me to write about our day-to-day adventures living in a camper a la Heath and Alyssa. If you were, sorry for not following through. But let’s be honest: you probably forgot you subscribed to this blog in the first place, and now this sudden flood of confusion mixed with mild disappointment is causing you to unsubscribe as we speak. Trust me, I get it—no hard feelings.

I was fully expecting to document our journey, too—but then we actually started living in the camper, and as it turns out, living in a camper is a lot like living in an apartment.A very small apartment that requires physical removal of your own urine and feces, yes, but an apartment nonetheless.

The thing is, we weren’t traveling while we were living in it. Our #RVLife was not the quirky, non-stop adventure you see from other full-timers on Instagram. Our lifestyle was more akin to being a homeless vagabond than a travel blogger. Except we were homeless vagabonds with an income who shopped at Whole Foods and the Apple store. To be honest, I struggled with this incongruity. Our upbringing and status as college graduates with a decent resume didn’t fit at all into this picture of camper living.

There were times I had intense feelings of guilt and imposter syndrome over our lifestyle experiment, because we were exposed to so many people who lived this way out of pure necessity.

Anyway, back to the shocking mundanity of our camper life. A typical week for us really felt no different than a typical week for most “normal-space” dwellers. During the week we parked in Palo Alto, the affluent hub of Silicon Valley where you’re just as likely to run into a millionaire as you are a homeless person. Our truck camper was just one of dozens parked a long a stretch of El Camino Real by the Stanford campus. We even made a cameo in a local news story about the growing RV epidemic.

Our camper made a cameo on the local news about the growing Homeless RV People epidemic. Yay!

On the weekends we escaped the high-tech machismo of Palo Alto and rented a spot in Half Moon Bay (shout-out to Pillar Point RV Park!), where we recharged outdoors. The majority of our weekends were spent walking along one of the coastal trails, and I know we have the camper life to thank for that. Because when you have the choice of staying in an enclosed space or taking in the fresh air and scenery of a picturesque beachside town, you typically go with the latter.

I think—at least in our case—there is a direct correlation between one’s square footage and the time one spends outdoors. The larger living space we had, the less motivated we felt to stretch our legs outside. We were comfortable, so why venture into the world where we had to drive and find parking and fight crowds? It always felt like a struggle getting to the outdoors, whereas camper life brought the outdoors to us.

So this was our routine for a year. And then at the end of November 2018, we put our camper in storage and took the money we saved to go on sabbatical to travel, learn, and spend more time with our families. Now that we’ve been out of the camper for a few months, I’ve had time to reflect on the experience, which I’ll talk about in future posts. Right now we’re just two (now-married) guys enjoying the fruits of our former camper life, for which I’ll always be grateful. 🙂

7 thoughts on “Why I Didn’t Blog About Living in a Camper”

Life evolves as do the people in it! Glad you are back writing your blog. We finally embarked on our full-time #RV adventure after selling our house in the California foothills in December to escape a state we no longer recognize despite having been natives for nearly 60 years! Our goal too is to get outside more and visit family and friends more often than at the various funerals.

Looking forward to continuing to follow your adventures (especially Italy, a place we hope to explore more of in a few years). Ciao!

I enjoy your writing, so hope you’ll get back to posting. (Of course, I say that as a writer myself whose email signature still boldly refers to myself as a blogger even though the most recent post on my various blogs is anywhere from 2 years to almost 3 years ago!) Even though you’re not currently *living* in your camper, I hope you’ll still write some posts on your experiences, as well as what your recent travels and what comes next.
–arden–

Hey Arden, thanks for the support and the encouragement. I think every writer is self-conscious about calling themselves a writer. 🙂 I know I certainly am. We’re going to Italy at the end of March for several months, so you’ll see some Eurotrip adventures soon. I hope you like food pictures. 😀

I pretty much like anything and everything about food (a recurring theme on *my* blogs) so, yep, looking forward to hearing (and seeing) about your trip! 😉 Also, meant to say before that it looks like congrats are in order since you guys got married since your last post! May there be many happy years ahead of you.